In the early 1900’s, Dr Carl Jung pioneered a unique counselling/psychotherapeutic approach for the interpretation of the images and scenarios of our unconscious, in particular, those that arise when we sleep. Jung’s therapeutic work is based on the premise that dreams hold all the information a person needs to understand their personal and collective issues. The associations an individual makes to the symbolism and themes presented in their dreams, provide a guide to elements of their lives that are out of balance and require focus.
Jung viewed dreams as a compensation by the unconscious. By this he meant that in our waking life, we are generally focused on being who we think we are, or should be. We are largely unconscious of the repressed parts of ourselves. However these parts haven’t gone away just because we have hidden them. They come out in our dreams, when our psyches try to balance or compensate while we sleep.
Using your dreams as the foundation, the Jungian process guides you through an exploration of your subconscious. The counsellor supports you to look within, to not only acknowledge what you discover but to actualise what you’ve discovered in how you live your life in this awareness of your true self or soul’s calling. In other words, dreams are the language of the soul.
Dreams are a symbolic language. Often they can feel like a story told by a mad person. This is not that far from the truth. Our waking ego is conditioned to view dreams this way; unlike our so called “primitive” indigenous peoples who took dreams very seriously indeed. They would say we were “mad” because we place no value on our dreams. Perhaps another way describing this “madness” is neurotic behavior. (Jung’s Theory of Neurosis)
This work can be used to address many issues including self-esteem, relationships, mental outlook, emotional reactions, creativity and performance.
Over time, you will develop the skills to manage this process independently and start to assimilate the practice into both your conscious and subconscious life.
In conjunction with dream work, we’ll use a number of other techniques to access deeper levels of exploration:
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